The romance of perfume / by Richard Le Gallienne ; with drawings by George Barbier

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THE ROMANCE
PERFUME

RICHARD LE GALLIEMNE

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THE ROMANCE OF PERFUME

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from

This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries

https://archive.org/details/romanceofperfumeOOIega

PUBLISHED BY

MCHARB HUBMUT

Q€W YORK.- PARIS
4<©<2.S

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PRINTED IN U.S.A.

COPYRIGHT 1928 BY RICHARD HUDNUT

THE ROMANCE OF PERFUME

working power of certain words. Many old charms and spells
consisted entirely of words, spoken correctly under the right con¬
ditions, or written on parchment and worn round the neck in little
silken bags. Our old acquaintance from the Arabian Nights, Abra¬
cadabra, was such a word. Spirits rose from the vaSty deep, and the
bronze doors of buried treasure-chambers sprang open, with daz¬
zling disclosure, at its utterance. This power of words is no mere
fable. There are words in common use of a like potency. The power
of orators lies in their employment. But here we are concerned
only with a word which cannot be overmatched by any in the dic¬
tionary for its concentrated power upon the mind, the word —
perfume. Its mere mention carries us over the length and breadth
of Time. To follow its associations is to survey all human history,
and to trace its adventures would be to write the Story of civiliza¬
tion. Perhaps there are but two other words, the words — hove and

q* 5 ifc

War , that similarly concentrate, as in an essence, the drama of
man’s life upon the earth, and even they do not more completely
concentrate and evoke its romance and mydery than the word —
perfume. To begin with, the thing itself is so myderious in its
origin and its operation. Music is even less Grange, more capable
of explanation, for instance, than musk. That the rubbing of horse¬
hair over catgut on a violin should Stir within us thoughts beyond
the reaches of our soul, is marvellous indeed, but the magic hidden
in a dried secretion of the male musk deer from the mountain
ranges of Atlas and the Himalayas is certainly no less marvellous.
The power of musk to diffuse itself over large spaces and to endure
through long lapses of time, without any apparent diminution of
itself, as a physical fad; alone, appeals to the imagination.

“A few centigrams of musk placed on a sensitive scale,” says a
scientific writer, “can for years fill a large hall with their char-
aderidic odour, without showing an appreciable loss in weight.”

Perfume would seem to be one of the elements, one of the orig¬
inal secrets of the universe. How it gets into flowers, and certain
uncouth creatures, as for indance, ambergris in the whale, or civet
in the civet-cat of Abyssinia, or musk once more in the Florida
alligator, is a hidden process of the divine chemidry, and why it
affeds us as it does no philosopher has yet explained. Literally it
belongs to those invisible powers whose influence is incalculable,
and as yet unknowable.

Leaving aside as insoluble its origin and operation, and accept¬
ing it as a beautiful mydery, let us surrender ourselves to the incan¬
tation of the mere word — perfume — for it is in itself a veritable
attar of all the romantic experience of humanity. In it as in a little

6

glass vessel charged with the distilled essence of the souls of the
moonlit roses of a garden in Shiraz, wherein, too, the songs of the
Shiraz nightingales have become mysteriously blended, are locked
all the perfumed memories of Time. A mere breath of it Stealing
through the brain will make pictures for us of all the glory and
pathos of the world, carrying us beyond the confines of recorded
hiStory, into the auguSt mornings of the early gods, about whose
ruined shrines the old incense Still indeStrudtibly hovers, and re¬
creating for us the magnificence of superhuman kings whose sar¬
cophagi Still exhale frankincense, galbanum and myrrh. Egypt
and Greece and Rome come back re-created by a mere perfumed
breath in our noStrils, and lands with magic names, Arabia,
Persia, and far Cathay, are spread before us vividly as in a dream.

Caravan from China comes,

For miles it sweetens all the air
With fragrant sil\s and Healing gums,
Attar and myrrh —

A caravan from China comes.

0 merchant, tell me what you bring,
With music sweet of camel bells,
How long have you been travelling
With these sweet smells?

0 merchant, tell me what you bring.

Time has been travelling with these sweet smells from the begin¬
ning; and, though its hiStory may be written in blood and tears, it
is written, too, and perhaps more completely, in perfume. The Story

^ 7 8^

of man, I repeat, is the Story of perfume, for every Step he has
taken since chaos to this present hour has been accompanied by
sweet odours. In sweet odours his multitudinous memories are
wrapped. We have but to breathe them to watch the whole ro¬
mantic paSt rebuilding about us in a phantasmagoria of perfume.

HE soul of a man in love is full of perfumes and sweet
odours,” says Plutarch, and the mySterious connection be¬
tween perfume and the soul seems to have been one of the earlieSt
intuitions of man groping dimly after an understanding of that
Strange side of him which eludes the eye and the ear, and after
which the hands reach in vain: that “little soul,” that divine
“breath,” so vague, so tender and caressing, “vagula, blandula,”
which the Emperor Hadrian expressed, imprisoned like a butterfly,
in a tiny cage of fluttering words. As perfume seems to be the soul
of the flower, so the spirit in man has seemed in all ages to be the
evasive immortal essence of his mortal body. Some philosophers,
indeed, have placed the soul in the olfaCtory nerve, and the sense
of smell has always been recognized as the moft ethereal of the
senses. All that is sacred, pure, and innocent in man, all that sug¬
gests his Starry origin and deStiny, seems in some way to be moSt
poignantly hinted at in perfume. Not merely fancifully and sym¬
bolically, but actually. The deeds of a good man are said to “smell
sweet and blossom in the duSt,” and the innocence of children, the
pure thoughts of youth, the holiness of saintly men and women,
are known to give a sensible fragrance to their very bodies. “The
odour of sanCtity” is no mere phrase. It has been over and over
again attested as a faCt. On the other hand, evil is suggested by

qfl 8

China

foul odours, as, say, in the case of beautiful fungi, which, however
beautiful to look upon, offend and even make us afraid as at the
presence of something dark and unsandtified. The gods and god¬
desses of all religions are represented as spreading about them a
cloud of sweet perfume, an effluence from the central loveliness of
their divinity. “The lotus,” says an old Arabian proverb, “has its
root in the mud of the Nile, and its perfume at the throne of God.”

The Elysian Fields, which was the Greek’s idea of Heaven,
were made out of perfume. In the midSt of them Stood a golden
city with ramparts of emerald and gates of cinnamon. About the
walls flowed a river of perfumes, one hundred cubits in width, and
deep enough to swim in, from which rose an odorous mi£t, which
enveloped the whole place and shed a refreshing and fragrant dew.
In this city, too, there were three-hundred and sixty-five fountains
of honey and five hundred of the sweeteSt essences.

Similarly the ground of Mahomet’s Paradise is made of musk,
and the houris that dwell there are made of musk from head to
feet; also in the building of certain famous mosques large quanti¬
ties of musk were mingled with the mortar.

Perfume thus being a divine attribute, it is natural that the
prieSts of the earliest religions should be the firSt perfumers. The
Egyptian prieSts practiced the manufacture of perfumes as one of
their ecclesiastical mySteries, using them in the worship of the gods
and in the funeral ceremonies of great kings. It is on record that
in a religious procession in the reign of one of the Ptolemies, one
hundred and twenty children marched, bearing incense, myrrh
and saffron in golden basins, followed by numerous camels laden
with three hundred pounds of frankincense, crocus, cassia, cinna-

9

mon and orris. It was from their bondage in Egypt that, among
other civilizing influences, the Jews derived their knowledge and
sacred regard for perfumes. Readers of the Bible will recall that
among the firSt of the Divine commands given to Moses were
diredtions as to the eredting of an altar of incense, and the com¬
pounding of the holy oil and perfume, for use alike in the anoint¬
ing of the altar, the tabernacle, the sacred vessels, and the heads of
kings. Very specific were the Divine diredtions for the compound¬
ing of this holy oil, as may be read in the Book of Exodus: “Take
unto thee sweet spices, Stable, and onycha, and galbanum; these
sweet spices with pure frankincense; of each shall be a like weight:
and thou shalt make it a perfume, a confedtion after the art of the
apothecary, tempered together pure and holy.” In Babylon, Assyria
and Persia, there was the same sacred use of perfume, and even the
druidesses of ancient Britain crowned their brows with verbena.
Incense and prayer were accounted as one, as they mounted to¬
gether into the ethereal spaces and pleaded with perfume before
the thrones of the immortal gods. Kama, the Hindoo god of love,
employed perfumes as weapons, and so generally associated with
sacred uses was perfume in antiquity that Moses decreed very severe
penalties againSt those who used the holy oil and incense for private
purposes: “Whosoever shall make like unto that, to smell thereto,
shall even be cut off from his people.”

Perfume has always signified something fine, mysterious, aristo¬
cratic in human life. Beginning as the attribute of gods and god¬
desses, it became the peculiar treasure of kings and princes and all
noble persons, and it may well be that its immemorial association
with beautiful women is related to that divinity which Plato and

c_ Ancient Qreece

other great philosophers have always maintained as residing in
beautiful forms. Gods, kings, nobles and beautiful women: with
these perfume is associated as by divine, aristocratic right.

CHARLES LAMB speaks of certain names that “bring a
perfume in the mention.” Arabia is such a name, and par¬
ticularly when we speak of it in Roman fashion, as “Arabia Felix”
— “Araby the BleSt” — it seems, like those houris of Mahommed’s
Paradise, to be made entirely of musk. Indeed, when we speak of
“the EaSt” generally, the firSt enveloping thought in our minds is
that of piled up roseate clouds of perfume, a rolling curtain of
sweet odours, through which come gleams of far-away enchanted
lands of myStery and romance, mosques and palms and rose-
gardens filled with moonlight and nightingales. As when we speak
of Greece we think firSt of marble, to say “The EaSt” is to think —
perfume; the Perfumed EaSt. It Stirs our imagination juSt as a
flower Stirs it. Above all its other associations, it is a sweet smell in
the mind. And the reason, of course, is that the EaSt was the dis¬
coverer of perfume. Its peoples were the firSt lovers and artiSts of
perfume, and its firSt purveyors to the reSt of the world. In the paSt,
as Still in a measure to-day, its beautiful business was perfume, and
its merchants, from China, Hindustan and Persia, from Babylon
and Assyria, moved aromatically across the Arabian desert in cara¬
vans laden with balms and spices for the altars of Egypt, and the
palaces of Greece and Rome. Babylon was the great clearing house
of perfume, gathering into its warehouses the whole perfume har¬
vest of the EaSt, to be distributed by the ubiquitous Phoenician
trader through Tyre and Sidon, and Sheba in Arabia Felix, till

II ftb

even such savage borders of the earth as Gaul and Britain were
touched with the civilizing breath. Among the mercantile activi¬
ties of Tyre recorded in the Book of Ezekiel, the trade in balm,
“with chief of all spices,” — through “the merchants of Sheba” —
finds particular mention. In the ruins of Susa and Nippur perfume
bottles of glass and alabaster, ointment boxes of porcelain and chal¬
cedony are unearthed by the archaeologist to this day. The pomp
of Oriental kings expressed itself in nothing so magnificently as
in perfume.

“You are a happy man, O king: you smell in a moSt coStly man¬
ner,” said one of his poor subjects to Antiochus, King of Syria, a
remark which so pleased the monarch that he ordered a large ewer
of the royal unguent to be poured over the head of his humble,
unperfumed admirer.

This same King Antiochus once held some games at Daphne,
the description of which gives picturesque evidence of the lavish
use of perfumes in the ancient world. “In one of the processions,”
we read, “there were two hundred women sprinkling every one
with perfumes out of golden water-pots. In another, marched boys
in purple tunics, bearing frankincense, and myrrh, and saffron, on
golden dishes, and after them came two incense-burners made of
ivy-wood covered with gold, six cubits in height, and a large square
golden altar in the middle of them. Every one who entered the
gymnasium was anointed with some perfume contained in gold
dishes. There were fifteen of these dishes, each holding different
scents, such as saffron, cinnamon, spikenard, fenugreek, amarancus
and lilies. Thousands of guefts were invited, and after having richly
feafled were sent away with crowns of myrrh and frankincense.”

^Si2

Sardanaphalus is said to have committed suicide by causing him¬
self to be burnt alive on a pyre of fragrant woods, and when Darius
was vanquished by Alexander, among the spoils was found a casket
filled with precious perfumes, which the young conqueror at firSt
affedted to despise, having in mind, perhaps, his old tutor Leonidas,
who had reproached him with a waSte of incense in his sacrifices.
“It would be time for him so to worship,” the philosopher had said,
“when he had conquered the countries that produced the frank¬
incense,” a remark which Alexander recalled when he had con¬
quered Arabia, and, as an ironical reminder, sent his old tutor a
cargo of frankincense and myrrh. And later on, as Alexander con¬
tinued his Asiatic conquests, he seems in turn to have been con¬
quered by perfume, and to have become accustomed to his floors
being sprinkled with perfume, and to having aromatic resins and
myrrh constantly burned in his presence.

: HE Greek poets and dramatists abound in references to per-
fumes, and the names of several famous Greek perfumers
have thus come down to us. The scent “megallium” embalmed the
name of its inventor “old Megallus,” and a fashionable perfumer
of Athens, Peron, Still lives for us in an old play :

Left the man in Peron’ s shop juft now
Dealing for ointment ; when he has agreed,

He’ll bring you cinnamon and spi\enard essence.’

^138^

And the toilet of a Greek dandy is thus described :

ME really bathes

In a large gilded tub, and fleeps his feet
And legs in rich Egyptian unguents ;

His jaws and breasls he rubs with thic\ palm oil
And both his arms with extract sweet of mint ;

His eyebrows and his hair with marjoram,

His fnees and nec\ with essence of ground thyme.”

Perfumed baths for gueSts are mentioned by Homer, and in the
later days of Greek luxury perfumes were scarcely less important
than the food at all delicate banquets. They were used not merely
for the purification of the hands, but were presented to the gueSfs
for their pleasure in gold and alabafter bottles, and sweet odours
were showered down upon them, as they sat, by many fanciful de¬
vices. Doves with wings saturated with perfume would circle above
their heads as they ate, raining down upon them a fragrant irides¬
cent mhsl. Perfume was also mingled with the wine, “myrrhine,”
a preparation of myrrh, being fashionable for this purpose, as well
as honey and sweet-smelling flowers.

The Romans followed the Greeks in the use of perfumes as they
followed them in all the civilized arts and elegancies. Perfume
naturally played a great part in their elaborate baths, one room of
which was called the “undtuarium,” wherein were ranged large
jars of ointments and essences for the use of the bathers. Among
the simpler of these were unguents such as “rhodium” made from
roses, “melinum” from quince-blossoms, “metopium” from bitter

qfli4 B*>

almonds, “narcissinum” from the narcissus, but there were a num¬
ber of others more elaborate; one in particular favoured by the
more wealthy sybarites having been specially invented for the king
of the Parthians. This consisted of twenty-seven ingredients, and
co£t four hundred “denarii,” something like a hundred dollars, a
pound. Roman men of fashion, following their Greek models,
made use of a different perfume for each part of their person, and
for each of their garments. So far did the rage for perfume go in
Rome that horses and dogs were rubbed with scented ointments.
Military flags were also perfumed, and while the blood of gladi¬
ators and wild beafts was Staining the sands of the amphitheatre,
odorous dews were falling upon the spectators from the “velar¬
ium,” the awning that formed the roof. Saffron was particularly
in use for this purpose.

As in Greece, too, perfume was lavishly used at Roman feaSts,
and Catullus, in inviting his friend Fabullus to dinner, after firSt
telling him that he muSt bring the materials of the dinner himself,
“for the purse of your Catullus is full of cobwebs,” adds that he,
on his side, will look after the perfumes. “On the other hand,” he
says, “you shall have from me love’s very essence, or what is
sweeter or more delicious than love, if sweeter there be; for I will
give you some perfume which the Venuses and Loves gave to my
lady; and when you snuff its fragrance, you will pray the gods to
make you, Fabullus, nothing but nose.”

Again, as in Greece, the universal passion for perfume in Rome
resulted in making the shops of the perfumers fashionable rendez¬
vous, and the “unguentarii,” as they were called, became an hon¬
oured and thriving class. Whole quarters of some cities were given

^15

up to them and their aromatic merchandise. Rome had its “vicus
thuraricus,” Capua had its Street of the Perfumers, called Seplasia,
and the sophisticated city of Alexandria had a veritable rose-garden
of marts and booths, where sweet-smelling ladies, and their gal¬
lants, no less redolent of the mysterious distillations of the EaSt,
ruStled and glittered in the gay African sunshine. Those “unguen-
tarii” were the high-prieSts of fashion and pleasure, and many of
them were learned chemiSts, as well as artiSts, in whose laboratories
ebony slaves worked at their fragrant employ, Sternly watched, and
Stripped, and examined at the end of the day — juSt as diamond-
workers Still are in South Africa — leSt they should have Stolen
some of the coStly unCtions for diemselves.

Perhaps nothing is more significant about perfume than its power
of investing with charm and distinction everything with which it
is associated, everything upon which it has left its lingering touch —
even trade. To trade in perfumes is to belong to romance. Perhaps
there is nothing that men have sold that so dignifies the merchant.
Beautiful as are precious Stones, we do not regard the jeweller as a
romantic being. Even poets who sell their wares, however profitably,
lose in dignity by the transaction. We come to think of them rather
as tradesmen than poets. The processes of business overpower the
romantic quality of the thing they sell. But with the men who sell
perfume, we forget that they are merchants and think only of their
romantic wares. The very faCt that they deal in perfumes seems to
imply that, in their case, the mere trading is secondary, and that
the beautiful thing they trade in has become their business from a
paramount love of it. In their case their hands do not become
“soiled” by trade — they become perfumed. Merely by selling per-

q ti 1 6w°

fumes they become affiliated to the mysterious, the aristocratic, the
refined and delicate side of human life. They partake in all the
divine and noble associations of perfume. Their business from the
beginning has been with deities and prieSts, with kings and nobles,
with great and beautiful ladies. As something mySterious clings to
the humbleSt sailor because he has business with the magic and
myStery of the sea, so it always has been, and Still is, with the mer¬
chant of perfumes. Because of its essential myStery, it is easy to see
why the maker and purveyor of perfume should have been affil¬
iated even with necromancy and those old alchemic arts, the won¬
der of which Still clings to modern chemistry. The romance of
geography, which not even wireless has yet destroyed, fills the busi¬
ness offices of even a New York perfumer with “murmurs and
scents” of far-away aromatic lands. The little aromatic packages,
covered with Strange Oriental characters, swathed with spicy wrap¬
pings, tell of long journeys from far-away sweet-smelling lands,
and even “synthetic” perfumes bring before us laboratories, retorts
and phials, such as the old alchemists once employed in the search
for the elixir of life, and such as Cleopatra watched in her Still-
room long ago in Egypt, distilling unguents to conserve her beauty.

Whether they realized it or not, the men who firSt made per¬
fumes were seeking to diStil something like the essence of human
romance, something that in an aromatic dew-drop would convey
the drama of living, the intimations of the soul, and the spiritual
thrill of love. The Arabian doCtor and chemiSt Avicenna (980-
1037), among the arduous Studies and picturesque adventures of
his romantic life, set himself to this task, and, great as were his
other achievements, he is perhaps beSt remembered by his diStilla-

^178^

tion of rose-water from the rose known as Rosa centifolia, a per¬
fume so grateful to his countrymen that when the Emperor Saladin,
a century and a half afterwards, conquered Jerusalem, he had the
walls and floors of Omar’s mosque washed with it. His learned
treatises are remembered only by scholars, but his rose-water keeps
his memory sweet to this day.

There are many other perfumes whose very names seem to smell
sweet by immemorial association. Merely to write the words
“frankincense and myrrh” sweetens the page, as so many pages of
the Bible and other old sweet-smelling books are perfumed by
them. The very plants from which they come seem thus to have a
romantic, and even sacred significance. Like the lover in Heine,
frankincense comes from Yemen in Arabia, the precious tears of
the terebinth tree, as myrrh also exudes from another little tree,
with the learned Latin name of balsamodendron myrrha growing
also in Arabia; fabled by the Greeks to be the tears of Myrrha, the
daughter of a King of Cyprus, who was the mother of Adonis and
was transformed into the shrub that bears her name.

When the Magi followed the Star to the birthplace of ChriSt,
myrrh was one of the birthday gifts they brought, and it is roman¬
tic to recall that Still to this day on the feaSt of the Epiphany, in
commemoration of those Magian gifts, little silken bags containing
gold and frankincense and myrrh are placed on the alms dish of
the Chapel Royal in London by the Lord Chamberlain of the King
of England.

Perhaps the moSt ancient of historic perfumes is that “balm of
Gilead” which was part of the merchandise of those Ishmaelite
traders to whom Joseph was sold by his brethren. We are told that

1 8 Stfb

«•

o Ancient 'Rome

they “came from Gilead with their camels, bearing spicery, and
balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt”; and the
famous balm was made from the gum of the plant amyris growing
on the mountains of Gilead, a ridge running from Mount Lebanon,
the whole region of which was rich in fragrant shrubs.

The spi\enard of that alabaster box which Mary broke and
poured upon the head of Chrift, as he sat in the house of Simon the
Leper in Bethany, is another perfume with a long and ancient his¬
tory, and the word, which in its original derivation meant sweet¬
smelling thing, was probably applied as a generic name for all per¬
fumes. It was made from a plant of the valerian order, found in
the mountains of Bootan and Nepaul in India. When Alexander
the Great invaded India, he found himself pervaded with the fra¬
grance of nard crushed out by the feet of his elephants.

Saffron is a word which is a fragrance in itself, and to retell its
hiftory alone would require a whole volume. It was one of the
plants in that “garden enclosed, my sifter, my spouse” of King
Solomon — “spikenard and saffron: calamus and cinnamon, with
all trees of frankincense ; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices.”
It was known to the Egyptians and is frequently mentioned by
Homer. It was ftrewn in Greek theatres and Roman baths, and
when Nero entered Rome the ftreets were ftrewn with saffron. It
was cultivated in Persia and used there and in China both in food
and medicine, as it is ftill used in Spain. It is made from a variety
of crocus, and the crocodile was long supposed to get its name be¬
cause the only “true” tears it ever shed were those forced from it by
the fragrance “where saffron groweth.” It was considered of such
importance in the Middle Ages that in Nuremberg, in the 15th

century, men were burnt at the Stake and buried alive for the crime
of its adulteration.

Ambergris is another perfume with a romantic hiftory. Its name,
like “attar,” is Arabic, and originally means any perfume. Its ro¬
mantic associations, like those of civet, are in curious contract with
its origin, though that origin has a different romance of its own,
that of lonely seas and sea-coafts, the seas of the Ancient Mariner
and the buccaneer — and the whaler. Romantic enough, though it
may seem a far call from the sperm whale to the Court of Versailles.
Still that is but another of the surprising extremes brought together
by the romance of perfume, part of that mystery which dignifies
“animal secretions” by a sort of social transmutation, juft as the
mink and the silver fox are forgotten as we admire their skins about
the shoulders of a beautiful woman. So “the biliary concretion in
the inteftines of the spermacetic whale” found floating by rough
sailors on the seven seas, off the shores of Brazil and Madagascar,
also on the coafts of Africa, the Eaft Indies, China, Japan, the Mo¬
lucca Islands, and as near home as the Bahama Islands, becomes in
the hands of the alchemift of perfumes as rare and indispensable
an ingredient of his magical “waters” as it is of all elaborately
beautiful literature from the Bible to Flaubert.

Not merely shall it make sweeter the silken ruftle of the skirts
of the dead ladies of the court of Louis XV, but the cooks in the
royal kitchen shall use it to flavour the dishes of the weary king.

Sandalwood has a hiftory that goes back 500 years B.C. The
produft of an Indian tree, it is ftill a sacred perfume for religious
and funeral rites among the Indian and Chinese Buddhifts, and
the trade in it in old sea-faring days was full of romantic peril.

^20^

Whaling was not more dangerous than the queft of sandalwood,
and hundreds of sailors loft their lives in the Pacific that sandal¬
wood fans should wave in the hands of the beautiful women of
the Regency, and that they should have inlaid boxes, exhaling its
faint fragrance of rose, in which to hoard their love-letters.

Lavender is another scent with a long and picturesque hiftory.
The lavender plant, originally a native of the high altitudes of eaft-
ern Spain and northern Africa, has travelled as far north as Nor¬
way, and has become domefticated in England in Surrey, and in
America near Philadelphia. It was much used by the Romans in
their baths, and its botanical name Lavandula is somewhat doubt¬
fully supposed to be derived from “lavare,” to wash. The abbess,
Hildegard, in her cloifter near Bingen on the Rhine, is credited
with the invention of lavender water, and its immemorial use in
perfuming linen has given to it an association of romantic clean¬
liness. It suggefts old English homes, with their fragrant comfort,
and ftill to this day, it is sold in English ftreets to English house¬
wives by itinerant vendors, to the cry of “Lavender! sweet Laven¬
der!” — a cry reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Autolycus, and his

1 LOVES as sweet as damas\ roses,

Mas\s for faces and for noses,

Bugle bracelet, necklace amber,

Perfume for a lady’s chamber —

and those ftrolling perfumers in old France who, in scarlet coats
with gilt facings, used to sell “elixirs,” pills, opiates, eau de Co¬
logne, and all manner of cosmetics and quack medicines, from
elegant chariots, to the accompaniment of a brass band, till the

<*8 2i K#b

physician of Louis XVI had them banished by an unimaginative
ediCt.

]asmine is another perfume particularly associated with ro¬
mance, its name being derived from the Persian yasmin. The Ara¬
bians introduced it into Egypt as “sambac,” and in Persian and
Arabian poetry it is second only to the rose. There is a pretty Story
about its introduction into Italy. A certain Duke of Tuscany is
said to have come into possession of the firSt jasmine plant grown
on Italian soil, and he esteemed it so highly that he desired to keep
it as his own secret, forbidding his gardener to give away a single
sprig. The gardener, however, was also a lover, and on his sweet¬
heart’s birthday he made her a present of a bouquet of the forbid¬
den blossoms. These she planted, and reared others from them in
secret so successfully that she made a fortune by their sale, and
when she married the gardener was able to bring him a large dot
produced by his Stolen gift.

Patchoidi, which has come to have so sophisticated a sound, was
firSt introduced from India, where it grows by the Ganges, in asso¬
ciation with our innocent grandmothers, whose Indian shawls
were perfumed with it. Indian shawls being so coStly, French
manufacturers imitated them, but while they could successfully
imitate their fabric, they were at a loss for their peculiar odour, by
the presence or absence of which the genuine and the spurious
shawls were known. At length they discovered the secret, and,
having imported patchouli plants from India, detection became
more difficult. The odour is not for all nostrils, being of a musky
nature. Under its Indian name of “puchaput,” it is used for relig¬
ious purposes in sacrificial incense Sticks and paStils; and wherever

^22 fr

found, in Paris, London or New York, it Still carries with it the
romance of “your delicious EaSt.”

Rosemary is, of course, immortally associated with Ophelia:
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance,” and Shakespeare’s
plays and all Elizabethan literature smell sweet of it. It gets its
name from growing near the sea — “ros maris” meaning “sea-
dew.” It has lugubrious associations with funerals, but was once
much used also in wedding festivities. It was also much esteemed
for its medicinal virtues. Its fragrance comes to us now chiefly in
the form of scented soap.

Bergamot is another beautiful old name, with many associations
in literature, and, made from the juice of a small bitter orange,
brings with it the romance of the orange groves of Messina, “by
the blue Sicilian sea.” Snuff used to be perfumed with it. “Give
the nose its bergamot,” wrote Cowper. It takes its name from
Bergamo, famous for its rustic dance, the “bergomask” referred to
in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Thyme, which was used as an incense in Greek temples, has a
long paSt of attractive legend. When Shakespeare wrote “I know
a bank where the wild thyme grows,” in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, he was probably thinking of the Danish tradition that any
one waiting by an elderbush on Midsummer Midnight would see
the King of fairy-land go by with all his train of elfs and sprites.
Thyme, too, is said to have been one of the three plants that made
the Virgin Mary’s bed in the manger at Bethany.

The narcissus is another flower immemorially associated with
beauty and romance since that far-off day when the beautiful youth
Narcissus, son of a river god and a nymph, fell in love with his

23 Bfe

own image in a spring, and pined away from too much loving of
his own beauty. From his grave sprang the flower that Still smells
sweet with the breath of his youth, the flower that Persephone was
gathering in the meadows of Enna when Hades, the king of the
under-world, snatched her away, “herself a fairer flower.” Beau¬
tiful women Still delight in its fragrance, and the spirit of that beau¬
tiful Greek youth Still exhales for them from the essences distilled
by subtle perfumers from his memorial flower. For their purpose
the Narcissus odorata, grown in Algeria, and the jonquil, Nar¬
cissus jonquila, grown in southern France, are found the moSt
fragrant.

The orchid was once a nymph in the train of the Goddess Diana,
with a heart pure and cold as that of the Goddess herself. Bathing
at twilight in a Star-lit pool in the middle of a wood, Pan espied her
through the boughs, and loved her. But his shaggy form filled her
with terror, and she fled for shelter to the knees of her divine mis¬
tress, who hid her from him in moonlight. The god, however, was
determined to make her his own, and wherever she went, however
secret the place, there was his horned head leering out at her; nor
could the silver arrows of even Diana herself avail her nymph
againSt his persistent wooing. Then the goddess, in pity for her
plight, endowed her with one of her own divine powers, by which
she could change her shape at will. From that moment she was
secure againSt her rough wooer, for, whenever the sound of his
pipe was heard among the hills, she would change into a flower,
but never the same flower twice. And such magic was hers also
that she could cause the flower to mimic some living creature, or
inanimate objedt, so that thus she was hidden from her lover’s eyes.

^24^

India

I

Sometimes the flower would seem a bee, sometimes a butterfly,
sometimes a slipper fallen from her foot, sometimes her shining
tresses; now it would mimic the claw of a dragon, now a branch
of coral; now it would squat like a frog at the top of a swaying
Stem, now gleam white in the shape of a swan, now rear its head
like a snake among the bushes. Thus she played hide-and-seek with
Pan, and escaped his caresses, while her companions mocked his
uncouth distress with their laughter, till he himself at laSt grew
weary of the pursuit. Then the nymph, having need of her dis¬
guises no more, left them scattered like jewels up and down the
world, hiding away in lonely woods and glimmering marshes, as
she herself had hidden.

HE right use of a single jewel by a princess is one thing, but

a vulgar display of diamonds is another. And so with per¬
fumes. Their indiscriminate and unintelligent use by vulgar over¬
dressed courtiers and dandies has been a constant theme of dram¬
atists and novelists from the beginning. We meet with many such
“water flies” in Shakespeare, but the men with whom the early
hiStory of perfume is associated were far from suggesting effemi¬
nacy. To mention the names of some of them is enough. Tamer¬
lane, the Persian conqueror, Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine the Great,”
whose home was in the fierce music of trumpets and the clash of
swords, was no less a famous amateur of perfumes. Charlemagne
was hardly a “fine-puss gentleman,” but his court at Aix-la-Cha-
pelle smelt like a rose-garden; gifts of perfume were sent to him by
no less romantic a figure than the Caliph of “The Arabian Nights”
— Haroun-al-Raschid.

*K25 9*

The Crusaders, again, who will not be suspefted of effeminacy,
were largely responsible for the importation of perfume into
Europe. As they came back from Jerusalem, they brought home to
their ladies the sweet-smelling essences of the Eaft, and among
their gifts to St. Louis of France were rare attars and incenses un¬
known before to the altars and boudoirs of the Weft. And they
brought perfume with them, not merely as a luxury, but as a
“civilizer.” Table-manners in Europe were not so very delicate in
those days, and to introduce rose-water into the finger-bowls of
guefts at great houses was not perhaps the leaft of the achievements
of the Soldiers of the Cross. Some soldiers, indeed, whose courage
was never in dispute, have loved perfume to their undoing. Such
was the Roman General Plautus Planca, who, hiding in a cave,
was finally tracked by the noftrils of his pursuers, because, like
King Antiochus of Syria, he smelt in so coftly a manner. A later
warrior, the Prince de Conde, was a learned perfumer, and directed
his chemifts in the preparation of the snuff which he was wont to
take deliberately before his father. As we think of perfumes, one
cannot help recalling the line of John Keats’ poem, “Kings, princes,
were they all.” The names of perfumes, famous and current to this
day, are indissolubly associated with “the great” in one way or
another. Take Frangipani. Fragile, delicate, sophifticated as are
its suggeftions — ftill, it was a Marshal of France — Marechal des
Armees de Louis XIII — fellow-adventurer of Columbus, who was
its discoverer. A learned botanift, as well as a soldier, as the armada
of Columbus approached the coaft of Antigua, the Marquis was
ftruck by a delicious off-shore perfume. It proved to be the fra¬
grance of the Plumiera Alba in flower. Since then it has been

=$2 6

'Persia

known by his name, as his name is now only recalled by its per¬
fume, no longer amid the sound of brass ordnance and Spanish
musquets, but to the gentle waving of fans even more dangerous.
Like other great men, the great Marquis Frangipani smells sweet
and blossoms in the duSt.

HE fashion of perfume was firSt introduced into France, as
we have seen, by the Crusaders, and France, the great civil¬
izer of Europe, has remained ever since the country of perfume, par
excellence. From the twelfth century onwards the hiStory of per¬
fume might almoSt be said to be the hiStory of France. The kings
and queens of France, and its beautiful ladies who were queens in
all but name, have all been, with scarcely an exception, patrons and
patronesses of perfume. Affairs of State did not obscure for Philip
Augustus his interest in perfumery, and one of the earlieSt adts of
his reign, in the year 1 1 90, was to grant a charter to the perfumers
of Paris. Charles V himself directed the planting in the gardens of
the Louvre of a garden particularly designed for the distillation of
perfumes — lavender, roses, lilies, violets, sage and hyssop. Fair
women eagerly sought after musk and ambergris. Perfumed cos¬
metics of all kinds were in demand, and scented soaps were ped¬
dled through the Streets by itinerant “savonniers,” crying:

“J’ai savon d’ outremer , savonl” —

7 have soap from overseas — soap! —

the moSt fashionable soap then coming from Naples.

Everything was made to smell sweet. Linen was perfumed with
sachets, called “coussines,” lavender and violet being the moSt

^279*=

favoured odours. In the old account-books of the chamberlains of
the kings and princes of the House of Valois, we have such pictur¬
esque items as this: “June 1383. To Hugues Dars, chamberlain of
Monseigneur de Valois, for roses and lavender, bought by him to
place among the King’s linen.” This king was Charles VI, and
there is a similar entry of the purchase of “azure” satin from which
to make sachets for his beautiful and gallant Queen Isabeau of
Bavaria, one of the mo£t exquisite of the devotees of perfume. Her
rooms, as those of other great ladies of the time, were perfumed
with “Oiselettes de Chypre,” which were artificial birds made of
silk and feathers, and Stuffed with perfumed powders.

Charles VIII (1470-1498) had his perfumer “en titre” — per¬
fumer to the King ! Catherine de Medici also had hers (of whom
more anon) , while her beautiful rival in the affections of her royal
husband, Henri II, Diana of Poitiers, is said to have had ho less a
personage for her beauty doCtor than the famous alchemist Para¬
celsus — though one of her recipes was no more mySterious than
the washing of her face on the coldeSt mornings in “well-water.”
Catherine’s infamous son Henri III, who made up like a woman,
is said to have employed perfumes and cosmetics dating as far back
as the boudoir of Poppaea, the wife of Nero. Catherine’s official
perfumer — and poisoner — was the famous Rene the Florentine,
whose shop on the Pont au Change will be familiar to readers of
Dumas. Nowadays the diabolic skill of Rene is regarded as fabu¬
lous, but in his own time he was credited with the invention of
perfumed gloves so subtly poisoned that the wearer drew in death
through the pores of the skin. A pleasant gift of such gloves by
Catherine to Jeanne d’ Albert, mother of Henri IV, is said to have

^28^

resulted in the demise of that great lady. But modern science de¬
nies the possibility of such romantic poisoning.

Gloves more innocendy perfumed played a great part in the
history of perfume, and it is interesting to note that the sale of per¬
fumes was a branch of the glove business for upwards of two cen¬
turies, and remained inseparable from it till the reign of Louis XIV,
who granted a charter to the guild of “gantiers-parfumeurs” in
1656. Anne of AuStria, the queen of the beautiful hands, of whom
it was said that with fair linen and perfumes one could entice her
to Hades, was a great lover of perfumed gloves. She sent to Naples
for them, though she is credited with saying that for a glove to be
perfect, its leather muSt be prepared in Spain, cut in France, and
finished in England. Gloves made of mouse-skin were fashionable
at her court.

Queen Elizabeth of England, in whose reign, owing to the
travels of her “Italianate” courtiers, perfumes firSt became fash¬
ionable in London, also took great pleasure in a pair of perfumed
gloves brought to her with “other pleasant things,” from Italy by
her favourite, the Earl of Oxford, who himself, soldier as he was,
wore a jerkin of perfumed leather. Queen Elizabeth had her own
Still-room— as also had her court ladies — where she diverted her¬
self with composing her own perfumes. One of her compositions
has come down to us — a pomatum made from apples, mixed with
the fat of a young dog! Her royal linens were kept in “sweet cof¬
fers” — cheSts of fragrant wood; and she particularly prided herself
in a cloak of perfumed Spanish leather — that “peau d’Espagne”
which is Still eSteemed in our own day.

Perfumed bellows were used by Cardinal Richelieu to make

sweet his apartments, and the Elizabethan playwright John Ford
thus alludes to them:

1 ’LL breathe as gently
As a perfumed pair of suc\ing bellows
In some sweet lady’s chamber.

The perfuming of rooms and even public places was a pleasant
feature of the paSt. In Catherine de Medici’s day, the fountains of
Paris, on feStal occasions, used to play perfumes, and there is on
record an old bill of six golden crowns paid by the City of Paris,
in the year 1548, to the perfumer Georges Marteau, “for aromatic
herbs and plants, to perfume the waters of public fountains during
the late rejoicings.”

{j H

HE medicinal and sanitary use of perfume has been recog¬
nized from the earlieSt times. The Greek physician Hippoc¬
rates prescribed perfumes for his patients, particularly for those
suffering from nervous disorders, and recipes for certain potent
essences were inscribed on marble tablets in the temple of Aescu¬
lapius.

HE befl recipe for health
Is to apply sweet scents unto the brain

says an old poet, and musk is Still a universal specific in China, and
regarded as curative of moSt bodily ills from headaches to serpent-
bites. Distillations from the rose were regarded as especially effi¬
cacious among the Greeks, and there is a legend of a poor but beau¬
tiful girl Mil to whose pious offerings of flowers to Venus had so

won the divine favour that, when her beauty was threatened by an
unsightly tumor, the goddess appeared to her in a dream prescrib¬
ing the application of roses from her altar, whereby the loveliness
was immediately restored. According to Anacreon —

HE rose diflils a healing balm
The beating pulse of pain to calm.

OOKS on perfume began to appear early in the 1 6th century.
One of the earliest of these was “les secrets de Maiftre Alexys
le Piedmontois,” which contained this recipe for a magical water,
warranted to make ladies beautiful for ever: “Take a young raven
from the neft, feed it on hard eggs for forty days, kill it, and diftill
it with myrtle leaves, talc, and almond oil.”

Another of these was published in Paris in 1530, by one Jean
Bodin, and had for its charming title: “The Decoration of Human
Nature and the adornment of Ladies.” Bodin was a precursor of
the great French perfumers of the 17th century, which may be
called the great age of perfume. A veritable “fury of perfume,”
according to a French writer, seems to have possessed all classes.
Sumptuary laws were passed againft its use by peasants and other
“common” folk, and even the sacred precincfts of nunneries were
invaded by it, some of the gayer sifters carrying their worldliness
so far as to paint and powder, and wear patches. To “make up” an
“elegante,” wrote a satirift of the time, “an entire perfumer’s shop
scarcely suffices.” Perfumers made large fortunes, and left names
to pofterity.

The book which is the great French classic of perfume is Le

Parfumeur Francois, published in 1693, by Simon Barbe, who
sold perfumes, in the rue des Gravilliers, “A la Poison D’or” —
At the Sign ol the Golden Fleece. The reader will probably like
to see Barbe’s full title in all its quaintness: “Le Parfumeur
Francois, qui enseigne toutes les manieres de tirer les odeurs des
fieurs, et a faire toutes sortes de composition de parfums, avec les
secrets de purifier le tabac en poudre, et le parfumer de toutes
sortes d’ odeurs, Pour le divertissement de la noblesse, Vutilite des
personnes religieuses, necessaire aux baigneurs et aux perru-
quiers. *

In his preface Barbe further adds that, beyond these uses of
his book, he considers that he will contribute to the glory of God
through the perfumes that the clergy (“les personnes religieuses”)
compose for their churches.

This book was very successful, and Barbe followed it by another,
Le Parfumeur Royal; but, in the interval, the vogue of perfume
had undergone a serious eclipse, for Louis, who, up till then, had
been known as “the sweet-smelling monarch,” had suddenly de¬
cided that the headaches from which he suffered were due to his
over-indulgence in perfumes. Henceforth perfume was banished
from the Court, except that of orange-blossom, and the diariSl Saint
Simon says that “if you had to approach anywhere near the King
you did well not to wear any.” A visitor from Sicily in Paris writes
that “one can enjoy all the pleasures of the senses in Paris, except
perfume. As the King no longer loves it, all the world is under the

* The French Perfumer, which teaches all the methods of extracting the
scents of flowers, and of preparing all kinds of perfumes, with the secret of
purifying tobacco, and perfuming it with any kind of scent. For the enter¬
tainment of the nobility, the use of religious persons, and indispensable to
bath-house keepers, and hair-dressers.

necessity of hating it too, and the court ladies pretend to faint away
at the sight of a flower.”

With the accession of Louis XV, however, perfume came into
its own again. The reign of that Strangely weary king had polit¬
ically much to answer for, but, if its thoughtless luxury did un¬
doubtedly haSten the “deluge” of the French Revolution which
Louis himself foresaw, it is but juSt to acknowledge that, under
the influence of that great arbitress of elegance, Madame de Pom¬
padour, it set Standards of taSte and Style in all the arts, and partic¬
ularly in what that old French perfumer called “the decoration of
human nature,” for which we Still owe it gratitude. The Story of
Versailles, indeed, is one long fairy-tale of elegance, and so large a
part did the increasingly refined and learned use of perfume play
in its enchanted life of fashion, that the court of Louis XV became
known as “la cour parfumee.” Etiquette prescribed the use of a
different kind of perfume each day, and the expenditure for per¬
fumes in Madame de Pompadour’s own household at Choisy alone
amounted in one year to no less than 500,000 livres (something
like $100,000) . The recipe for the perfumed cosmetic said to have
been moSt efficient in maintaining the beauty of Madame de Pom¬
padour is Still in the possession of a well-known French perfumer,
handed down to his firm by the heirs of Manon Foissy, chamber¬
maid to the Marchioness.

Madame Du Barry’s recipe for youth was a perfumed lotion
compounded for her by no less a “magician” than CaglioStro. She
had her own “Sfill-room woman,” too, who distilled fragrant
waters for her boudoir, and her expenditure on perfumes was per¬
haps only surpassed by the charm it enhanced.

^33

The famous “Poudre a la Marechale” takes its name from a
noble lady who used to amuse herself in this way, Madame la
Marechale d’Aumont. In this connection one muSt not forget an¬
other noble lady of an earlier day, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary,
who in 1370 distilled that “Hungary water” Still in use after five
and a half centuries. The recipe is said to have been given to her
by a hermit, and proved so preservative of her beauty that, at the
age of seventy-two, she was asked in marriage by the King of
Poland. This elixir, according to a formula as late as 1920, is com¬
pounded, among other ingredients, of rosemary, verbena, pep¬
permint oil, triple rose-water and triple orange-flower, with the
addition of ninety per cent of alcohol, and six months allowed for
its maturity.

HE elaborate wigs of the time necessitated an immense out¬
lay on perfumed powder. Philanthropists bewailed the fadt
that the flour thus employed would have fed ten thousand “unfor¬
tunates,” and that far more powder went on to aristocratic heads
than into aristocratic Stomachs. Everyone powdered, men, women
and children, and perfumed rouge too was the fashion with all
classes, a fashion with which we, in our present renaissance of the
elegancies, with our lipSticks and beauty bags, should not find it
difficult to sympathize. Then, as now, there were so-called “mor¬
alists” who frowned on the very human and civilized desire to be as
comely and dainty as possible, as though bad complexions were a
sign of virtue. All women looked the same age, they complained —
and why not ? Occasionally a great lady occurred who refused to
paint and powder, and there is an amusing Story told of Marie

^34^

Elizabethan England

Therese, who was one of these social heretics. In 1745 she arrived
in Paris from Spain to marry the Dauphin, and it was at once per¬
ceived “with terror” by the court that she used neither powder nor
rouge. It had been explained to her on the voyage that at the
French court her own natural pink and white complexion would
seem far too pale, and that she would simply have to paint a very
little. She remained obdurate, however, conceding at la£t that she
would so adorn herself only at the express order of the king, the
queen, and the dauphin. So important was the crisis that an ex¬
press was sent poSt-haSte to Versailles, where a council was called,
and that pink of dandies, the Due de Richelieu, despatched to her
with the weighty decision that paint and powder she muft. Then
only did she resign herself to the charming inevitable.

Even the guillotine of the French Revolution could only cut off
those powdered heads. Madame de Monaco put on rouge before
mounting the cart that was to take her to the scaffold. “Perhaps,
she feared,” they said, “that she would grow pale in the presence of
death.” Robespierre himself was always freshly powdered, and
exceedingly particular about his powdered wigs, nor did Napoleon
discard powder till after the campaign in Italy.

Fashionable ladies under the Diredtoire revived the perfumed
baths of the Greeks and Romans, and Madame Tallien, on leav¬
ing her bath of Strawberries and raspberries, used to have herself
gently rubbed with sponges soaked in milk and perfumes.

Napoleon’s taSte in perfume was simple, being confined to a
lavish use of Eau de Cologne, but his Empress Josephine had the
more luxurious taStes of her Creole blood, and she had her per¬
fumes sent to her from Martinique. The consumption of perfume

<#35W°

was never greater than it was during her reign, and a world
reeking with the smoke of her husband’s cannon may well have
thanked her for it. Her boudoir at Malmaison was so saturated
with musk that, sixty years after her death, it was Still redolent
of it, and its then owner found it impossible to rid himself of its
ghoStly presence. Ungallant man he muSt have been to wish to lay
so charming a ghoSt. To be haunted by the perfume of a beautiful
dead empress . . . the whole of the romantic power of perfume
is there.

Coincident with what one might call “the AuguStan age” of
perfume in France, England too went elaborately perfumed, pow¬
dered and patched; but, as in all such matters of fashion, she fol¬
lowed France then as now. In Dr. Johnson’s day, however, she
had one famous perfumer whose name has been handed down to
us in the pages of “The Tatler,” Charles Lilly, in the Strand, who,
we read, had great skill in preparing “snuffs and perfumes, which
refresh the brain in those that have too little to know the want
of it.”

Over a century later England was to produce, or to acclimatize,
one really illustrious perfumer, Eugene Rimmel, who, in addition
to giving his name to many well-known perfumes, wrote a charm¬
ing and learned book on the history of his art, “The Book of Per¬
fumes,” to which the present writer hereby acknowledges his
grateful obligation.

/T is impossible to refledt on the mySterious nature of perfume,
without realizing how well-founded has been the respedt paid
to perfumers throughout hiStory, for the perfumer muSt combine

qffi 3 6

in himself so many various gifts. He mu£t be at once a man of
science, and an artift, and be as well something of a psychologist
and a poet.* The Strange power of perfume over the mind and
the senses, its adtion on the memory and the imagination, the
manner in which it creates pictures, recalls far-away events, and
induces certain spiritual and emotional States, are so analogous to
the effects produced by sound and colour that, though the connec¬
tion is Still scientifically unproven, it seems impossible to doubt
that there is some deep connection between the three, and that all
are modes of one central spiritual apprehension. The famous per¬
fumer Piesse was so impressed by the correspondence between
perfume and music that he endeavoured to “arrange the different
odours in a ‘harmonic scale’ having the compass of the piano, and
to deduce therefrom a law for the mixture of the several aromatic
substances.” He dreamed of combining the several scents like
tones to produce chords in different scales; the chords of odours to
agree with those of tones.

That Piesse was on the right track there seems every reason to

believe, and modern perfume-artiSts are able, at leaSt, so skilfully to

combine various scents as to produce definite effeCts, and, so to say,

to transmit through the olfadory nerves precise messages to the

mind, such as the old Arabian lover would do by sending a letter to

his lady in the form of a bouquet composed of certain significant

flowers. In this respeCt it is not merely fanciful to compare the art

of the perfumer with the art of the poet. The poet makes use of

words to create certain pi&ures, or to Stir certain emotions, and the

* There is a curious chapter on the psychology of perfume in that Strange
romance, “A Rebours” by J. K. Huysmans, which the reader may care to
read for himself.

37

perfumer does precisely the same thing with scents, among which
he is able to discriminate with a learned sensitiveness no less deli¬
cate, and perhaps even more remarkable, than the poet’s sensitive¬
ness to those innumerable fine shades of words imperceptible to
others. There is, I underhand, a perfumer in New York who can
thus differentiate unerringly between two hundred varieties of
odours. The modern perfumer has also developed to a high degree
the psychological side of his art. The relationship between perfume
and personality is an especial objedt of his Study. As we are all
born with a susceptibility for particular colours, and an indiffer¬
ence to or even dislike of others, a fadt of deep unexplained mean¬
ing, and refledting in some mySterious way the secrecies of our
charadters, so is it with odours. Every one has one or more odours
to which his innermoSt self inStantly answers, and it is the art of
the modern psychologiSt-perfumer, an art which links him with
his old “necromantic” brethren of the paSt, so subdy to Study the
personalities of those more exquisite amateurs of perfume who
seek his magic elixirs as to create for them the perfume that will
exadtly correspond to their psychical selves.

HILE its immemorial perfumes Still come to us from the
EaSt, the modern Paradise of Perfume is to be found in
Southern France. Bulgaria has a special diStindtion for the fine
quality of the attar of roses distilled from its rose-gardens; and
England, in its villages of Mitcham and Hitchin, Still retains its
historic pre-eminence for lavender, as also for peppermint. But
Southern France, par excellence, is the modern Mecca of perfume.
Cannes is famous for its rose, acacia, jasmine and eroli oil; Nimes

^38

for its thyme, rosemary and lavender; and Nice for its violets. Yet,
as Sheffield is famous for its Steel, and Pittsburg for coal and iron,
the little town of Grasse has a more gracious fame. It might be
called the very heart of all the sweetness of the modern world, and
in a world where men muSt work at something, it is impossible to
imagine a town in which the inhabitants are more happily em¬
ployed. Its entire business is with flowers, that “concentrated youth
of flowers,” which someone has defined as perfume. It is a lit¬
tle dream-world, which for generations has had but one occu¬
pation, the perpetuation of the souls of flowers in exquisite dis¬
tillations, so that their spiritual messages of eternal youth and
romance, of beauty and dream, may be transmitted in little crys¬
tal phials to great cities far from the dawn and the dew, touch the
prose of life with delicate fingers, and give to its poetry a subtler
expressiveness. On the credit side of Catherine de Medici’s dark
account we have to write the beautiful institution of Grasse, for it
was she who sent there a certain Sieur Toubarelli to found its firSt
laboratory of perfume. It was an involuntary good deed which,
in its creation of generations of happy people, should be counted
in her favour againSt St. Bartholomew. AgainSt the sorrow she
brought to Paris the joy she brought to Grasse should surely weigh.
To her is due that all the inhabitants of Grasse today are joyous
dreamers, from the peasants who gather the flowers in the fields at
early morning to the learned artists of perfume who make from
them their ethereal concentrations.

Shakespeare’s phrase of “the art which nature makes” has never
had a more Striking illustration than Grasse, for the beautiful in¬
dustry by which it is famous is no mere accident. It is the inevitable

°$39 ^

creative expression of unique geographical and climatic conditions
which have made the Riviera from Mentone to Hyeres a guarded
and luxurious coastline, with the Maritime Alps, their snow-clad
peaks and violet gorges, for its Stupendous screen againft the north¬
ern winds, and the Mediterranean, with its soft sea airs and its en¬
chanted colours, iridescent and volatile as the hues of the dying
dolphin, that sea from which all the dreams of the world, Aphro¬
dite-like, have sprung, for its wave-borne energy of eternal Spring.
A coaft so guarded and so nurtured was necessarily a soil in which
only beauty could grow. To be the Garden of the World was its
deftiny. It could be nothing else. And throughout all hiftory that
has been its lovely meaning. Flowers flood it with colour and per¬
fume from eaft to weft. Only flowers can grow there. They are as
native and spontaneous to the soil as weeds to other lands. In what
other land shall one gather roses in December, or crush wild laven¬
der under one’s feet, carelessly blooming like heather across the
hills ? There flowering myrtle and calla lilies are as common as
daisies in English meadows, and through a Winter which would
seem like Spring elsewhere iris and English wall-flowers are in
perpetual blossom.

In such a land, man’s fortunate business is beauty. Whereas in
other countries men, scarcely human, toil in the blaze of furnaces,
or in the eternal night of mines, or, reeking with blood, make a
horrible livelihood by the slaughter of animals, in that earthly
Paradise of which Grasse is the centre, men make an art of nature,
and grow flowers, or plant orange-trees, or terrace the hills with
olives, or trellis them with grapes, or diftil perfumes. In short, as
Browning wrote, they do what some men dream of all their lives.

4°

Fortunate land, fortunate people! They live and move and have
their being in a Paradise of Flowers.

TATISTICS have sometimes an imaginative value. Here are
a few, which I have on good authority, and will witness that
what I have been saying is no mere “poet’s dream”: Grasse con¬
tains upwards of 50 distilleries of perfumes, and its exportation of
perfumes and essences brings it a yearly revenue of many millions
of francs. 60,000 acres are given up to the cultivation of flowers,
and these acres produce a yearly average of 2,640,000 pounds of
roses and 3,300,000 pounds of orange-flowers, 2,200,000 pounds
of jasmin, 220,000 pounds of tuberose. 25,000 pounds of roses
are needed to produce one litre of essence, which is sold for from
2,000 to 2,500 francs. Of course, these Statistics are relative and
vary from year to year, but they will give some idea of the business
reality of the dream-induStry of Grasse.

Every month in Grasse, however wintry, has its flowers. Here
is its calendar.

From January to March: violets, narcissus, jonquil, mimosa.
During April, May and June: the rose, particularly the rose centi-
folia, little known in the great floriSts’ shops on the Rue de la Paix
but with a delicate perfume all its own. This, too, is the season of
orange blossoms. The abundance of orange flowers carried daily
to the perfume factories makes one delirious to think of — 30,000
kilos (nearly 70,000 pounds) a day for each of the fifty “usines”
of Grasse!

June brings mignonette, pinks and golden broom.

July and August bring lavender, jasmin and tuberose. Particu-

41

larly in the evening, Grasse is aware of the infinitely delicate per¬
fume of the jasmin, which only gives its heart to the twilight, fill¬
ing all its Streets with its breath like the swinging of a censer.

AuguSt, September and Odtober are sweet with mint and gera¬
nium and aspic. And from September to December, the great yel¬
low cups of the cassia open and brim over.

As the seasons come along for these various floral crops, it is easy
to imagine the feverish activity in Grasse, both among the terraced
plantations where the reapers begin their beautiful labour at dawn,
only to end it at sunset, and at the various perfumeries wide open
to receive the fragrant harveSt. All day long, from plantations
doubly gay with the beautiful laughing girls and handsome youths
of Provence, to the perfumeries where more beautiful girls and
laughing youths await them, great wagons piled high with flowers
pass to and fro in a continuous Stream. It is a swift Stream, for there
is no time to waSte, as flowers are proverbially short-lived, and the
perfumer muSt catch their volatile breath before they fade. Arrived
at the usine, the piled up sacks are emptied on the spacious floor
of a great hall surrounded by high copper retorts, making vaSt
mounds of indescribable colour and fragrance, and these, having
been weighed, are carried off in overflowing baskets to the various
ateliers where the chemiSts wait to extrabl their souls. One can
easily realize how adtive those ateliers muSt be when one is told
that in twenty-four hours 50,000 kilos (about 110,000 pounds)
of roses, as well as many thousand kilos of orange-flowers, muft be
disposed of. When one realizes that there are some fifty such
“usines” in Grasse — think how sweet the old city muSt smell for
weeks with the passage all day long of these Paradisal cargoes.

■Fa France au i8me Siecle

Indeed, the whole country for miles around is like a sea of fra¬

grance. It is hard to imagine a more exquisite experience than to
approach the city under the Starlight during one of these floral
harvestings. A myStic might well believe that he was approaching
the gates of Heaven.

N the modern world the art and use of perfume have reached

a degree of expressiveness and refinement far surpassing that
of former times, less lavish, but more individual and more exqui¬
site. The whole realm of feminine aeSthetics — that is, the art of
the beauty of woman — has been freed from the bondage of the
narrow, unintelligent, moralist. Woman is no longer lectured for
taking a proper pride in her own charms and employing artiStic
means or dramatizing them by displaying them to the beSt advan¬
tage, even supplementing them, if needs be.

Nature unadorned, lovely as she may be, seldom makes the
moSt of herself, and her handmaiden art can teach her many things
that do not necessarily artificialize her, but, on the contrary, de¬
velop and accent her naturalness. The lily of the field may not
need painting, but the human lily is usually improved by sweet¬
smelling powder and a touch of rouge. As man’s firSt duty to
woman is his Strength, so woman’s firSt duty to man is her beauty.
It remains, as of old, his inspiration and his reward. It is also her
firSt duty to herself, for self-expression is the law of all healthy
organisms. The meaning of woman is — beauty, and all that beauty
implies, all that emanates from it: delicacy, elegance, romance, and
the atmosphere that exhales from these attributes. The achieve¬
ment of this need not detract from a woman’s work-a-day quali-

AH3 9ft»

ties, her goodness, her helpfulness, or her intelligence. On the
contrary, these qualities all gain by association with charm; and
it is curious to observe that the present widespread renaissance of
feminine aesthetics has come side by side with her vigorous entry
into that hard work of the world which had previously been re¬
garded as the exclusive province of man. The old idea that the cul¬
tivation of a woman’s brain meant a negledt of her beauty has been
exploded, as the moSt cursory glance into a modern office, or even
factory, is enough to prove. In entering man’s world, woman, far
from abandoning her own, has emphasized it, and whether she is
a lawyer, dodtor, or Stenographer, she is very evidently more a
woman than ever. I do not think it is a masculine illusion, but it
seems to me that the world can never have been so full of beautiful
women, and the reason is that never before has woman, en masse,
willed so whole-heartedly to be beautiful. This, I believe, has largely
come about by the campaign of education waged by all those vari¬
ous artiSts whose concern is with woman’s beauty, the modiSte-
creators of fashions in woman’s dress, beauty-specialiSts and so
forth, among whom not the leaSt important have been the per¬
fumers. Woman has been encouraged to Study herself with a view
of giving the higheSt expressiveness to her own individuality. For
generations she has been a mere amateur of herself. Now she has
become an artiSt — not to make of herself something that she is not,
but to bring out what she is, to show herself in her completely ex¬
pressed naturalness, as nature meant her to be, but sometimes
failed in achieving. When nature has not done her part, who shall
blame a woman for striving to make up the deficiency ? And by
means of feminine aeSlhetics, a woman less endowed with natural

beauty than some others can contrive to give an impression of
beauty to “the eye of the beholder” which is surely a gain all
round.

Of all the means towards this higher expressiveness of woman
none is more delicate or more innocent than perfume. By its means
the very soul of a woman, her spiritual atmosphere, can be dif¬
fused around her in unmistakable emanations of fragrance. As
surely as a rose tells us of its presence before our eyes have seen it,
so it is with a woman who knows the art of perfume, whose very
clothes thus become herself, whose dropped handkerchief is as
much a love-letter of her writing as though she had signed it.
Through perfume her very thoughts are told without the clumsy
medium of words. She becomes a veritable translation of herself
into sweet odours. Her perfume is her spiritual presence, the wo¬
man herself as she would have us know her to be. And the more
of an artiSt in perfume she becomes, she will be able to express
her “infinite variety” by its means, her various moods and subtle
changes from day to day, from hour to hour. There will always be
one perfume which is her inner, unchanging self ; but she will
know, too, how to seleCt other perfumes which will express the
variable play, the lights and shades, the nuances, of her being.
And for all these the perfumer has the answering magic essences,
distilled from a thousand flowers, and sensitively combined by his
learned skill. There is no shade too fine for him to express, no
nature, no mood, for which he has not the symbolic fragrance.
And there is one subsidiary branch of his art which has of late
been brought to an enchanting perfection. I refer to the exquisite
vessels, the fairy-like crystal bottles, the tiny phials of iridescent

<*845 &

glass, the quaint porcelain jars, the silken sachets, the dainty enam¬
elled boxes, the carved and inlaid fancies, and all the dream-like
bijouterie, in themselves “a joy forever,” in which he hoards his
enchanted dews, his air-soft powders, and caressing pomades.
There are in exigence beautiful scent-bottles from the tombs of
dead beauties in Egypt, 6,000 years old. Always has the art of the
perfumer thus been associated with all the other arts of elegance
and high civilization, but never more than today, and never was
its civilizing influence more needed than in this present hour; for
the world is ftill uncivilized, and a new barbarism of gasoline is
upon us. It is Still a world of bad smells, and we Still need our
casolettes, our caSting-botdes, and our pomanders. Poets, painters
and musicians are doing their beSt for us, but none are doing a
better work for civilization than our artiSt-perfumers, with their
concord of sweet odours. With the aid of beautiful women they
are doing much, and even our public buildings and Streets already
smell the sweeter for their joint conspiracy of perfume. And per¬
fume means not only elegance and refinement, it also means
gladness. That old slave was not so far wrong when he told the
king that he must be a happy man because he smelt so expensively.
Nothing so swiftly creates an atmosphere of happiness as fragrance.
The mind insensibly forgets its cares, and the soul dreams —

S when a box of essences
Is bro\en on the air.

^46^

ft

THIS BOOK IS SET IN A MODERN ENGLISH ADAPTATION OF
TYPE DESIGNED IN FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY BY
ROBERT GRANJON AND PRINTED ON SPECIAL ANTIQUE RAG
PAPER. THE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE REPRODUCED BY THE SMITH¬
SONIAN PROCESS. DONE AT THE PRINTING HOUSE OF WILLIAM
EDWIN RUDGE JANUARY I 928.

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